Of Nowhere in Particular
by simplesnowflake
Summary: Kristoff doesn't understand hair braiding. Or his sister-in-law, for that matter. In one lesson, Elsa demystifies both for him. A post-Frozen 2 icebros oneshot.


_This is a quick something that spawned from a two paragraph idea in chapter 6 of The Next Unknown, and ended up taking on a life of its own. You don't need to read that story to understand this one; but if you have, please accept my 3000 words of gratitude :)_

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**Of Nowhere in Particular**

This was ridiculous. He could dig a snow anchor in his sleep. He could fasten knots so secure that the sled wouldn't budge an inch in a snowstorm. He understood stuff like this.

"_Are you sure you know what you're doing?"_

"You're not helping, Sven."

"_You should just ask Anna to teach you."_

"She showed me once when she was half-asleep. I've got this. Hold still."

"Kristoff?"

Yelping, Kristoff whirled around in time to see the ropes that had flown out of his hands land conveniently in Elsa's.

"Sorry for scaring you," she said sheepishly.

"Oh my god." Kristoff clutched his chest. "I thought you were Anna."

Elsa's brow furrowed in concern. "Did the two of you have a fight?"

"No! No, we're good—great. Seriously. It's just… I'm kinda trying to surprise her with something and you know Anna; never know when she's going to pop up. Or where. One time, she gave me, like, half a second's warning before she jumped out a second-storey window and I had to drop everything to catch her."

_Nice one, Bjorgman. Now she'll think you're enabling her sister's recklessness._

"… Never mind. Did you, uh, need me for something?"

Elsa's lips curved. "Anna and I wondered if you might be free to join us for lunch." She raised the rope, which she had wound into a neat coil. "But now I'm wondering if I walked in on you putting Sven in a hogtie. He doesn't look very happy."

"We're just practicing some knots before our next trip into the mountains. Right, boy? Ow! Hey!" Sven had snorted and butted him.

Elsa arched a fine eyebrow.

Rubbing his back, Kristoff muttered, "Braiding."

"I'm sorry? I didn't catch that."

"Hair."

"Her?"

"_Braiding her hair!_"

Too late, Kristoff realised he'd practically yelled at Elsa. Anna's sister. His sister-in-law. Queen of ice and snow. _Crap._

But she only stepped forward with mirth in her eyes. "May I?"

Dumbly, he nodded.

Sven held perfectly still for Elsa, allowing her to loop the ropes over his antlers. "You have way too many ropes. It isn't as complicated as it looks; most braids require only three strands." She looked over her shoulder to where Kristoff still stood, dazed. Her smile broadened in amusement. "Come closer. I have no intention of strangling you."

He reluctantly drew up to her side, shooting Sven a hapless look. His best friend ignored him and let out a snuff of pleasure as Elsa scratched his chin. _Traitor_.

"This is a French braid." Elsa's fingers wove through the ropes in an entirely different kind of magic. "Dutch braid. Pull-through braid. Waterfall braid. The varieties are endless. The symmetry of Anna's pigtails would be difficult for a beginner; I suggest you start with a simple three-strand braid."

Kristoff's eyes felt crossed just from watching. He latched onto the word 'simple'. "Is that the kind of braid you usually have?"

"Yes. It was the first style I taught Anna, too." She fastened the spare ropes to Sven's other antler. "Here, hold your fingers like this. Try to follow along, and tell me if you need me to slow down. Ready?"

He wasn't. How on earth did women do this every day? He'd once seen Anna and Elsa take turns braiding each other's hair at games night, shouting guesses at Olaf's enactments without once looking down at their hands. Utterly terrifying.

But Elsa had once terrified him, too. And now she was laughing as she leaned over to free his clumsy fingers from the dead knot he'd somehow created, her voice warm with patience. "I know it's difficult, but it does get easier. Let's try again. Left… cross—no, the other way. Yes. Now right… and cross again… that's it. You're getting it."

His hair had flopped over his eyes. His left leg was itchy. He wanted to sneeze. But Kristoff dared not take his hands or eyes off the braid, which looked nothing like Elsa's. If he squinted hard enough, though, he could just see it starting to take shape.

There was a rhythm to it, too, just like ice harvesting. _Saw, clamp, lift, load… left, cross, right, cross…_

Suddenly, Elsa clapped her hands together. "You did it!"

"I did?" Kristoff blinked, looking down. He stared. "Holy carrots—I did it!"

He repeated it to prove that he could. Then again. When he finally managed to do it without Elsa guiding him, Kristoff punched the air and turned to her with both hands held high.

She tilted her head quizzically.

"Hi-ten," he told her. "Two hi-fives."

"Oh. Yes, of course." After slapping palms, she added, "You have very large hands."

"Doesn't help with the braiding, trust me."

"But it does mean you'll be able to catch Anna when she falls." Before Kristoff could think of how to respond to that, Elsa asked, "Would you like to try for real now?"

"Catching Anna? Kinda did that a hundred times already."

"Braiding hair, Kristoff."

"Right. Uh… sure." He sweated at the thought of Anna wearing his ugly braid for the rest of the day, because he already knew she would refuse to take it out. Sometimes Kristoff still wondered how someone like her had ended up so irrevocably taking over the heart of someone like him.

Elsa twirled her hand, and a stool of ice rose from the ground. Then she sat down with her back to him, clasping her hands in her lap.

That was when it hit Kristoff that she meant for him to practice on _her._ "Are you sure? I mean, I'd like to. May I—I mean we me… wait, what?"

Tucking a piece of hair behind her ear, Elsa chuckled. "You may."

"O-Okay... it's just, um, this is a lot. For me."

Even as he said it, Kristoff realised that it was a lot more for Elsa than it was for him. He knew her well enough by now to tell that she wasn't as relaxed as she tried to portray. They were two ends of the same chain, clicking together only when Anna was their connecting clasp. And they both knew that.

"I'm definitely going to mess up. My stupid salami fingers might yank out your hair."

"That's fine. When we were little, Anna used to pull my braid and pretend I was a racehorse."

It took a moment. Then Kristoff burst into laughter. "You're kidding me."

"Oh no, I am deadly serious. I was Elsa the Swift, proudly bearing Anna the Fearless-Viking-and-Sometimes-Dragonslayer into many vicious battles."

The strangest part was Kristoff could actually picture it. Not Elsa as a horse, but as a child zipping down the halls to indulge her rambunctious baby sister. Elsa with the chest of satin gloves Anna had told him about. Elsa withdrawing from others the same way Kristoff had—except she had been driven away by the horror of hurting them, and he had distanced himself out of fear of being hurt _by_ them.

Then there was Elsa wiping a smudge of paint off of his cheek on Anna's perfect birthday. Elsa being the only one to understand that he'd been acting out '_alone'_ at last week's charades. Elsa opening her arms and hugging him back for a fraction longer each time she returned from the Enchanted Forest.

Elsa conjuring a second stool for him so he could sit down and braid her hair.

Kristoff gazed at the stool's flawless crystalline structure, as fine and strong and brittle as the silky hair in his hands, and wanted to say _I love your ice. _

Instead, he blurted out: "I love you."

Elsa spun around. Their wide eyes locked together.

"Ice!" Kristoff said hastily. He could hear Sven laughing behind him. "I love your _ice_! I mean, I don't _not_ love—I do _like_ you…"

Elsa's lips twitched. "Kristoff?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"I also don't not love you."

Kristoff opened and closed his mouth. "That is very confusing."

"Double negatives usually are," she replied, turning back around. "But the meaning remains the same, no matter how complicated it seems."

Kristoff blinked, then sat down. Slowly, carefully, he combed a hand through Elsa's hair. "I'm sorry," he murmured.

"You really have nothing to apologise for."

"No, I meant… I'm sorry I wasn't there. When you and Anna found your parents' ship. And when you… you know. In Ahtohallan."

He couldn't see her face, and Elsa always sat with such poise that it was hard to tell, but Kristoff sensed her whole body go still.

He divided her hair into three strands. "I wish I'd been there. I _should_ have been there."

"No one but me could have safely crossed the Dark Sea—"

"I know that. I know there was probably nothing I could have done. And I'm not saying you and Anna need my protection but…" Kristoff let out a frustrated sigh. "I was raised by trolls, Elsa."

She sounded confused. "I know…?"

"Trolls have very long lives." The rhythm of braiding lulled him into forcing the words out. "Reindeers are better than people, because people beat you and cheat you. And leave you."

Things had been so much simpler when it had just been him and Sven. Before Kristoff had learned how dangerous it was to care for someone. Before the only two people he trusted froze to death one after the other.

_Left, cross, right, cross._

The braid slid out of his hands as Elsa turned around. "I'm sorry, too," she said softly. "For leaving you behind and…"

"Dying? Yeah, it'd be great if you could refrain from doing that again."

"You realise it must happen at least one more time, don't you?"

"You realise it would have sounded a lot more reassuring if you hadn't said '_at least'_, right?"

"Well," Elsa said with a bashful smile, "it wasn't like the first time was intentional. I thought it best to be safe."

"_Safe_," Kristoff retorted. "Please. You and Anna have no sense of self-preservation. Can you please develop some before _I_ end up having to rule Arendelle? That would be tragic for all involved."

"'King Kristoff' does have a nice ring to it."

"So does Kristoff Bjorgman of Nowhere in Particular."

People like him were not meant to be called _Your Highness._ They did not marry queens and live in castles. They had no business gelling their hair, or learning how to braid their wife's at night so she wouldn't wake up with shocking bed hair.

People like him were never meant to have so much to lose.

"I've always envied people like you."

Kristoff blinked. "I'm sorry, what?"

Elsa's smile was distant. "This will sound conceited and ungrateful… but I spent most of my life wishing I could be of Nowhere in Particular, too."

Oh.

Sven shot him a baleful, look-what-you've-done look.

Kristoff swallowed. "I think I was there that night."

"I'm sorry?"

There was no way he could do this face to face, so he twirled his finger. Despite being clearly confused, Elsa still turned back around. If only Anna was as compliant.

Unravelling the half-braid that remained, Kristoff said, "I'd snuck out of the orphanage to hang out with the ice harvesters, and I got separated from them when your parents rode past me in the woods. You left behind a trail of ice; it was like nothing I'd ever seen before. So Sven and I followed it to the trolls. I didn't know it was you and Anna until way later, when I saw your ice palace and made the connection. I mean; I've seen a lot of ice, but none of it comes close to yours. I never forgot it—because that night, I remember thinking that I wanted to be _you_."

Elsa sucked in an audible breath. "You shouldn't have. It was the worst day of my life. I hurt Anna and I… I lost a lot of things that night, Kristoff."

"Yeah, but I didn't know that. I was a scruffy orphan feeling sorry for himself. All I saw was that you had parents who obviously loved you, a sibling to play with, and _ice_ magic to boot. Everything I didn't have, and wanted. But then Bulda adopted me. I went from Kristoff of Nowhere in Particular to Kristoff of the Valley of the Living Rock—and now I'm supposedly Prince Kristoff of Arendelle."

He began the braid again, his fingers steadier this time. "I'm sorry that you were scared that night. If I could go back, I'd jump out of the bushes and tell Pabbie to leave Anna's memories alone, and to save those visions for when you were older. But I'm not sorry that you are you, Elsa, because… well—let's just say that the worst day of your life set into motion the best of mine. You're the reason I have a family."

Anna falling quiet usually meant something was wrong, but Elsa's silence was a part of her; a bridge as much as a barrier. When he'd first started staying in the castle, Kristoff had instinctively hid himself whenever servants or guards approached, unable to shake off the feeling that someone would tell him he wasn't supposed to be there. He'd discovered many broom closets this way.

Every now and then, though, he'd slip into a random sitting room and stumble across Elsa tucked away, reading. There was always a startled, wary edge in her expression when she looked up, but Kristoff had also learned to expect the subtle relief when Elsa recognised that it was just him. She'd offer a smile and sometimes tilt her head or raise an eyebrow. Then she would usually return to her book without saying anything, leaving only an indescribable warmth in the silence; assuring him, without words, that he was welcome to stay.

Sometimes they sat and talked. Sometimes she read and he napped, and they'd both jump out of their skins when Anna inevitably banged into the room with leaves in her hair, ducklings in her hands, and sunshine in her eyes. Sometimes Kristoff would slip out of a busy ballroom and onto a secluded balcony, and she'd already be there catching a breath of fresh air. Sometimes, they'd wordlessly share a flute of champagne one of them had brought out, and he would understand in her tired smile that Elsa of Arendelle and Kristoff of Nowhere in Particular were not so different after all. Two fixer-uppers guided by the same landmark.

Elsa's voice sounded raw as she said, "May I change your life a second time?"

"It'll at least be the fifth time, but sure."

"If you give Anna a pillow to hug and use a hot water bottle to warm up the bed near her feet on cold nights, she won't kick you in her sleep."

"… Are you serious?"

"Yes. Although I do advise wearing an extra layer. I haven't found a way to stop her from stealing the blanket."

"What about the snoring? Any tricks for that?"

"Mother had a way of simply closing her mouth, but I also have not figured that out yet."

He finished the braid and held it over her shoulder. "If I can, do I get a prize?"

Elsa secured her hair with a touch of ice, and smiled back at him. Her eyelashes were heavy with unfallen tears, but her eyes shone with warmth. "I hope you're not expecting another medal and sled. I've already given you my whole world."

She had. She'd given him the gift of summer, wrapped in laughter and strawberry blonde hair.

Who they could now hear calling their names.

Kristoff and Elsa looked at each other.

"Bucket," he predicted, as they both stood up.

Elsa shook her head. "Dress."

Standing at the door, they watched Anna's face light up as she spotted them. She flounced across the courtyard, evading buckets of soap water left behind by the cleaning staff and even remembering to lift her dress as she ran. There was hope.

Then they saw her shoes. "Heels," Kristoff muttered, as Elsa sighed, "Oh dear."

"There you guys are! Are we having lunch or _ho-whoooaa!_"

The Queen of Arendelle landed face first in a fluffy mound of snow.

Elsa lowered her hand and gave Kristoff a pointed look. "Your wife."

"Your sister."

A snowball exploded on the doorframe above, showering both of them in white.

Anna giggled in the background.

Kristoff shook the cold out of his hair and began to roll up his sleeves. "Our idiot?" he suggested.

"Queen of Poor Decisions," Elsa agreed, calmly brushing herself off as a winter breeze swirled at her feet.

Anna was already running, her laughter floating up into the sky.

Reindeers were better than people; Kristoff knew that was true.

For all except two.


End file.
